TechLifeWeb

I don't think I have any spare M.2 slots but this is interesting | That spare M.2 slot in your PC isn't just for storage, here are 4 clever things you can do with it https://www.howtogeek.com/that-spare-m2-slot-in-your-pc-isnt-just-for-storage-here-are-clever-things-you-can-do-with-it/

Handy Windows utility for keeping things up to date | UniGetUI by Devolutions | Windows package manager GUI https://devolutions.net/unigetui/ 'One GUI for WinGet, Scoop, Snap, Chocolatey, Pip, Npm, and more'
#Windows

TIL about JPEG XL aka JXL. Guess it's been around for awhile but it is now getting wider adoption. Looks interesting.
https://jpeg.org/jpegxl/index.html
#JPEGXL #ImageCompression #DigitalImaging #photography

Watched 'The Menu' last night. One of those movies you can't really talk about without giving things away. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
The Menu (2022) - IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9764362/ 'A young couple travels to a remote island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.'
#movies

How Soon Will AI Dramatically Change the Economy?:

Dwarkesh Patel, in an interview with Tyler Cowen, argues that by the end of the decade, AI minds will surpass human minds in intelligence and speed, and will vastly outnumber humans. He warns that these advanced AI systems—especially those capable of self-improvement—could rapidly outpace human development, potentially leading to a loss of human control over key institutions and decision-making.

Linus Torvalds has started using AI to develop the Linux kernel:

"“The code, the test programs, the review that forms the basis of the list above, and the first draft of this text were produced with the help of an LLM coding assistant (Claude Code) under my supervision,” Linus Torvalds writes in the documentation."

Senate Unanimously Passes the Health Care Cybersecurity and Resiliency Act:

"The Health Care Cybersecurity and Resiliency Act requires certain cybersecurity measures to be adopted, such as encryption of electronic protected health information, implementation of multifactor authentication, ongoing monitoring for cyber events, and penetration tests. The bill also requires the adoption of cybersecurity best practices in line with national cybersecurity frameworks such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework."

Is it stealing to use your work-issued Excel to manage your car shopping? Just a simple spreadsheet of pluses and minuses of each brand and model. Now, how about using your work issued AI of choice to do the comparisons for you? Or, use it to vibe-code the next car shopping app.
The ethics here seem like big issues to me that aren't being thought through. Then again, I'm nowhere near CIO level so maybe they are? I suppose the answer is in monitoring token use since that is easier to monitor that what is being tracked in Excel.
#ai #ethics

Via Hobby Builder (@HobbyBuilder@mastodon.social) on Mastodon:

i missed the old internet, so i built a 1996 chat room. not servers. not channels. a room. you walk in, strangers are mid-conversation about a tape deck, somebody says "a/s/l" unironically. no account, no app, no algorithm. just pick a screen name and go. Late Night is best after eleven. lolchat.rip - a 1996 chat room

Via Andy Greenberg (@agreenberg@infosec.exchange) on Mastodon:

Using AI in many cases means sending your most sensitive and intimate thoughts to a server where they can be exploited as training data, sold to ad brokers, or even handed to law enforcement.

So I assembled this guide to using AI with your privacy intact.
How to Use AI With Your Privacy Intact | WIRED

Via Robo (@rtw@mastodon.sdf.org) on Mastodon:

This website renders live baseball games as pixel art. This is my favorite recent thing on the internet and it’s why I think the indie web is so important. I’ve had 8bit games like this up on my second monitor most nights while I game or do other things. Ribbie: 8-bit baseball

Somewhere along the line I broke my RSS feed and it stopped validating correctly. I probably wouldn't have noticed but then I tried to add the feed to FreshRSS and it barked at me. Note to self: recheck everything, especially after late night coding.
#indieweb

Via lukenstine (@lukenstine@mastodon.social) on Mastodon:

I built a social network with no comment sections.

Your posts are public. Every reply is a private conversation with you — nobody else sees it. The post shows how many people replied, never who.

Chronological feed, no algorithm, no ads. One small server, plain PHP.

Read it without an account: https://woseapp.com/

Study shows marvels of the Roman Empire's road network:

"The study showed the ‌old adage "all roads lead to Rome" was not exactly true, and the empire's later imperial capital Constantinople — present-day Istanbul — was a better fit for that maxim."

Via World News Bot (@NewsBot@assortedflotsam.com) on Mastodon:

Can AI be a public utility? World watches Korea's bold experiment - The Korea Times

TIL about ".home.arpa" top-level domain (RFC 8375) for you home LAN domain. I never bothered setting up a domain on my home router. Giving this a try to help name resolution. There are arguments for using a real domain that you've purchased doing something like .lan.myrealdomainname.com so the you don't have to worry about certs and browsing just "works" but I'll give this a try first just to test the waters. FAFO as they say.
#SelfHosting #networking

Sensitive Info Goes Into ‘No Reply’ Emails Constantly. This Guy Sees It All | WIRED https://www.wired.com/story/sensitive-info-goes-into-no-reply-emails-constantly-this-guy-sees-it-all/ 'Two security researchers bought cheap domains—including noreply.net and deleteduser.com—and set up email listening services. Hundreds of companies are sending them corporate secrets.'
#infosec

I am planning a self-hosting build and am currently trying to decide between a full Docker setup (I'm comfortable installing the OS, but Docker is still relatively new to me) or exploring options with a bit more user-friendliness, such as Yunohost or CasaOS. I don't mind working at the command line, but additional helpful interfaces might make the experience feel less like a second IT job. If anyone has experience with this I'd appreciate your insight.
#Docker #SelfHosting #YunoHost #CasaOS

Via Calishat (@researchbuzz@researchbuzz.masto.host) on Mastodon:

WHOA. #HTML #ASCII #stunting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YtygAx_C6A A Walkable ASCII Cyberpunk City in One HTML File - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YtygAx_C6A

Really nice tutorial on Darktable | 10 Step Darktable Workflow (Start to Finish) - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RLv8NeJc2Q 'If you're looking for a free alternative to Lightroom but feel overwhelmed by darktable’s interface — this video will show you a structured, repeatable workflow that actually works.'
#photography

Interesting article explaining what data centers are and their impact on the community they are built in. | Did you know most of your daily online activities rely on data centers? Here’s how it works – PolitiFact https://politifact.com/article/2026/aug/17/what-is-ai-data-centers-electricity-water/ #ai
Key numbers from the article:

• Typical AI data center electricity use: up to as much as 100,000 households per year
• Largest data centers under construction: about 20× that amount (per the International Energy Agency estimate in 2025)
• Data centers worldwide electricity use (2024): about 415 terawatt-hours, roughly 1.5% of total world electricity
• U.S. data center power demand (by 2030): 9.5% to 15.3% of total U.S. electricity consumption
• Water used: relies on freshwater (usually from local municipal water systems) for cooling

Are mass layoffs coming? Most states let you check – here’s how | FOX 5 San Diego & KUSI News https://fox5sandiego.com/news/are-mass-layoffs-coming-most-states-let-you-check-heres-how/ 'A federal law called the WARN Act, which stands for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, requires medium-sized and large companies give notice before they slash staff. Those notices, in most cases, are publicly available – if you know where to look.'
#work #employment

Via Abdullah Ahmad (@iabdullahahmad@mastodon.social) on Mastodon:

AI coding agents are amazing, but their context collapse is real. Stop re-explaining your entire codebase every session. 🔁

I open-sourced Vibe Coding OS to give Claude & Cursor persistent memory using Obsidian and MCP. It structures your markdown vault as a project brain, letting your agents read your architecture and write their own dev logs so they never forget. 🧠💻️

Grab the repo here:
iabdullahahmad/VibeCodingOS: A fully wikilinked, Dataview-powered Vibe Coding OS for Obsidian. https://github.com/iabdullahahmad/VibeCodingOS

As a baseball fan, I want to quickly find the answers to 5 everyday questions:

• What are today's divisional games?
• What were yesterday's divisional results?
• What's on the schedule for tomorrow's divisional games?
• What are the current divisional standings?
• What do the league wildcard standings look like?

You can find this info on MLB.com or your team's page, but it’s not all in one easy spot—there's usually a lot of clicking around. Plus, if your team isn’t in the AL East, you end up scrolling way more.

That’s why I’ve been working on this MLB Dashboard https://techlifeweb.com/mlb-dashboard
I can choose NL West and it should "stick" so next time I visit that page in the same browser it I'll quickly see that same division and know what games are in progress, to be played or completed for the day. I save a link to my phone's home screen and the information is at my finger tips.

Fun hobby project. ⚾
#mlb

TIL about this site to find Flock and other ALPRs around you. | DeFlock https://deflock.org/ 'your go-to resource for understanding and addressing the growing presence of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) in our communities.'
#flock #alpr #privacy